Survival Instincts Read online

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  Hot air blew into their faces as they shuffled through the front doors of the department store. Twinkling white lights and colorful glass balls hung from the ceiling and lined the walls. The boy thumped his boots against the black welcome mats, and chunks of ice melted quickly into the fabric. His mother took his hand but he shook it away, shooting her a look. “Mom.”

  “Fine. But stay close.”

  They weaved their way around groups of shoppers, his mother’s blunt heels clicking against the shiny linoleum floor. The boy kept his eyes on her heels, watching the nude pantyhose crinkle and stretch with each step.

  “Here we are.” She stopped in front of the boys’ dress apparel, her eyes already wandering to the adjacent section. “Pick out a few pairs of slacks to try on. I’m going to pop over to the bedding area. It’s right there.” She pointed to the sheets and down comforters folded neatly into rectangles a few yards away. “Are you listening?” She squeezed his arm. “I’ll be just over there. I want to get winter sheets for you and your brother. Back in a flash.” She was already walking away, moving determinedly.

  The boy was only going to look at tan pants and dress shirts; he was only going to wander through the racks, grabbing random items, knowing when it came down to it, his mother would do the picking anyway. But then he saw her. She was around his age, sixth grade he would guess, but she didn’t go to his school; he would have noticed her before. Her shiny brown hair was pulled into a ponytail and she was wearing a pink raincoat and pink rain boots. He wondered if she was from out of town, somewhere where they didn’t have thick, sturdy snow boots that were hauled out of the basement in late November. Before he realized it, he was following her, slipping out from amongst the dress pants and into the center aisle. He glanced quickly toward the bedding area and saw his mother in profile, bringing a sheet set up to her nose. The girl walked slowly, pausing at a perfume counter to smell a strip of scented paper, running her hands over a pair of dangly earrings, stopping to look in a full-length mirror. The boy wondered where her parents were. He trailed her closely, so close that he could have reached out and pulled her ponytail, jerking her toward him, catching her completely unaware. He saw where she was going before she got there and his pulse sped up. He stepped carefully onto the escalator step as it changed from a flat surface to a mound and then took two more steps up so that he stood on the step behind her.

  “Do you want to go around me?” The girl spun, her face screwed up with irritation.

  “No.” His heart beat hard and fast.

  “You’re crowding me.” She sighed loudly and turned away from him, standing her ground, crossing her arms over her raincoat.

  “Sorry.” They were almost to the top now. The girl gripped the rubber railing in anticipation and took one step forward. The boy took a step at the same time, pushing into her back, sending her down on to the metal grate where the steps sucked into the machine. He watched as she twisted her body, landing hard on her wrists and knees. The machine moved her body forward and she flailed, trying to right herself as the ground moved beneath her. The boy stepped carefully around her.

  “Help!” The girl’s voice was shrill and tears slid down her face. The boy watched as the bottom of her rain jacket caught in the metal grate.

  Two adults appeared out of nowhere, one frantic, one calm. The calm one quickly jerked each of the girl’s arms out of the jacket as the frantic one pulled the girl up.

  “She’s ok,” the calm adult said. “She’s ok.”

  The frantic one, the girl’s mom, the boy decided, from the way she was holding the girl close and rubbing her wrists, said, “What happened, Susan?” over and over.

  “He pushed me,” Susan said, pointing to the boy. Her face looked like a quilt, patched with bright pink and stark white streaks. She began to sob in earnest. The boy watched her throat convulse.

  “No. It was an accident,” he said, and then noticed his own mother, running up the escalator, taking two steps at a time, looking uncharacteristically out of sorts. “It was an accident,” he said again, to his mother this time. “I bumped into her and she fell.”

  “I’m sure it was an accident,” Susan’s mother said. “I’m sure he didn’t mean to push you. Of course he didn’t mean to push you.” Her voice shook.

  The boy watched Susan for as long as he could as his mother pulled him away.

  * * *

  —

  Now, lying in his childhood bed, in his childhood house, he enjoyed the silence for a moment. He pulled on khaki pants from his duffel bag and the gray sweater he had been wearing since he got out. He crept down the stairs, realizing only when he came to the spot that always let out a loud creak that he didn’t need to be quiet. His eyes slid over the family portraits lining the walls. A series of pictures from the same September afternoon when he was ten and his brother was eight. His mother and father hovered over him and his younger brother, bright fall colors burst from the frames. “Beautiful family,” he murmured as he descended. Even he knew it was an odd thing to say, given the circumstances, and that thought kept a smirk on his face as he took the last stairs down to the first floor. On his way to the kitchen, he paused at the family computer, shook the mouse, and watched as the screen came alive. It took him a few moments to remember his way around the desktop, but he eventually found the Internet icon and clicked. He typed in the letters with his pointer finger, scanned the results. The fifth link he clicked on took him to a page filled with a grid of pictures. He remembered this social site, but barely—it’d just come out when he was fifteen. The man stopped breathing for a moment and then carefully brought up the first picture, the most recent, according to its time stamp, and looked at the location tag. The caption read: ON OUR WAY! #FIREPLACE #WEEKEND #FROSTYRIDGECABINS. It was hard to believe that this wasn’t a trap. How could it be so easy? Did people really show their lives like this on a minute-by-minute basis? But the longer he stared at the picture, the more he realized his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him; it was easy because it was meant to be.

  He walked into the kitchen and stopped. He turned his face away. He didn’t like blood. He stepped carefully around the pooling liquid, making sure to grab his father’s gun from the kitchen counter. He turned off the lights and did a quick visual check that everything looked tidy before closing the door behind him. He cracked the door back open and grabbed his father’s car key off the front hook. He climbed behind the wheel of the blue Saab and typed the location from the picture into the GPS: Frosty Ridge Cabins, Loon, New Hampshire.

  ONE DAY

  BEFORE THE CABIN

  ANNE

  “Amon-oo-sock?” Anne tried out the letters on the small green sign pointing to the winding road through the mountains.

  “Amo-nu-sux.” Rose squinted at the sign through the passenger-side window as the bulky SUV slowed and turned off Rum Hill Road of Bath, New Hampshire, onto the mountain road. “Try saying that ten times fast.” Rose laughed and reached her hand into the back seat. Thea reached for Rose’s outstretched fingers with the hand that wasn’t playing Fruit Ninja, or whatever other game from the list of “acceptable apps” Anne had compiled, on her phone.

  “What, Mimi?” Thea asked, and then looked at the sign. “Oh, Ammonoosuc.”

  “However you say it, this is the road we take to the cabin.” Anne smiled in the rearview mirror at her daughter.

  Anne watched from the corner of her eye as her mother dug into a paper bag at her feet and pulled out three chocolate chip cookies. “I think it’s time for these,” Rose declared, handing a cookie to Thea.

  “Yesss! Thank you, Mimi.” Thea grabbed the cookie and tossed her phone onto the empty seat beside her.

  Anne kept her eyes on the road. “Can you just break me off a small piece, Mom? I need both my hands on the wheel right now.” The road twisted higher and snow swirled lightly against the wi
ndshield. Rose broke off a small chunk and placed it in Anne’s palm. “This is pretty neat, huh?” She popped the cookie into her mouth and glanced back at Thea again.

  “Yeah. How much farther?” Thea asked, through a bite.

  “It’s about thirty minutes on this road, Thee.” She heard a groan and added, “Oh, come on, it’ll go quick and it’s beautiful.”

  It was beautiful. Anne tried to take in the snowcapped mountain peaks looming ahead while keeping her eyes peeled for other cars zooming around the switchbacks in the road at sixty miles per hour.

  The last time she had been to a cabin, she realized suddenly, was with Thea’s father before Thea was born. The memory of sitting around a fire, her head against a soft flannel shoulder, flashed into Anne’s mind. She pushed out the image just as quickly. She had always believed in being truthful, especially with Thea, about difficult subjects. She’d always trusted her daughter’s intelligence, intuition, and perceptiveness, even when Thea was a small child. But she had never told Thea the whole truth about her father. She was going to—she told herself she was waiting for the right moment, for Thea to be an appropriate age, and then they would sit down and Anne would tell her everything. Two years ago, though, instead of telling Thea her biological father’s name, Anne had blurted out another name. She had panicked; it had just happened—but afterward she felt immense relief. It was done. She was safe inside her lie. If Thea ever googled the name Anne had given her, a million generic results would pop up. She would never have to break Thea’s heart and she would never have to talk about him again. The last time Thea asked about him, Anne told her daughter, yet again, that there really wasn’t anything to tell—he vanished shortly after she was born and then they moved, just the two of them, from New York to Vermont, and it had been the two of them ever since. “Not everyone who has a baby is actually ready to be a parent,” Anne had explained again. But that last time, instead of asking more questions, Thea had snorted and walked away. Anne had heard the expression, about how silence can be a lie, but whoever came up with that didn’t comprehend there are some stories that don’t need to be told.

  Eyes on the road, Anne commanded herself, and thoughts away from him. The road really was becoming a bit treacherous. Anne’s too-big SUV hugged the outside of the mountain as they climbed higher and higher and the road itself was covered in a light sheen of ice.

  “Anne, the next overlook we pass, should we stop in? These views are stunning.” Rose had her phone out, snapping wobbly pictures of the mountain in the distance.

  “Sure, I could use a stretch, too. Sound good, Thee?” She looked into the rearview mirror to see Thea’s lips moving and head bouncing to whatever song pelted through her earbuds, fingers flying across the screen. “Who are you texting, Thee?” Anne rolled her eyes at Rose. “Great, perfect, glad you’re enjoying this family time,” she said at the girl in the mirror. She smiled and shook her head. “I have a preteen,” she whispered to Rose.

  “How are things going on that front?” Rose asked quietly. “Still . . . tense?”

  “I mean, at the end of the day we’re best friends, obviously.” She cringed at how desperate she sounded, but when she stole a glance at Rose, her mother was nodding along genuinely. “But, everything I do annoys her and we’re just having some . . . boundary issues,” she finished.

  “Growing pains,” Rose responded. She was quiet for a moment and then, “She’s idolized you since she was a baby. You have always been her world. Do you remember how she used to cling to your leg every waking moment when she was a toddler?” Rose laughed. “Even a few months ago, you guys walked arm in arm everywhere. She needs to find out who she is beyond your relationship. It’s natural. You did the same thing.” Anne felt her mother’s glance. “You know,” Rose lifted her arms, “the whole spreading of the wings thing.”

  “Idolize is a strong word.” She laughed, but tucked Rose’s words away for later. The spreading of the wings had caught Anne totally by surprise. Their Friday morning dates (Thea’s new school started late every Friday) had come to an abrupt halt a few weeks ago when Thea refused to get out of bed, and their weekend movie nights had been replaced by Thea asking to spend the night at Livi’s. Anne wondered secretly if Thea’s recent moodiness was correlated to the end of Anne’s “friendship” with Lyndon, the Canadian man she’d been seeing for the past few months. She’d introduced him as a friend and he’d only come over for dinner twice, but still . . . Thea had liked him. It was possible that she had secret pinings for a father figure and perhaps she had been hopeful Lyndon would fill that role. That would be completely understandable and normal. As a therapist, Anne understood that children, especially in the ten- to eighteen-year-old age range, constructed much of their own identities out of that of their parents, even absent parents. It was healthy for Thea to be interested in a father figure, and, of course, for her to wonder about her biological father, but at some point, Anne was certain, she would bloom into a young adult and begin to shape her identity based on her own beliefs and experiences. Thea would distance herself from Anne, as puberty set in, and begin to learn about the world for herself. In fact, that phase seemed to be already well under way. They’d had numerous discussions by now about different types of families, and Anne had always kept her dating life, or lack thereof, not secret per se but . . . private; there was no point in introducing Thea to someone unless it looked like it was getting serious, and that had only happened once, with the Canadian, who was now safely across the border. He’d told her, quite suddenly, that he no longer felt safe in the States, and that he had a flight home in a week. “The work relocation was always just a trial. I asked to go back to our home office and my bosses had no problem with it. So. Back I go. You know . . . you could come.” He’d said it cheerfully, casually. She couldn’t begrudge him his decision (it was the sixth mass shooting that had made national headlines since he’d arrived), but she was also taken completely by surprise. She thought, for an instant, about taking Thea and leaving the country, starting over up north; instead, she hid her shock by agreeing and demurring, also cheerfully, “Of course. That makes total sense. But I can’t yank Thea out of school again, so . . . good luck!” That was that. The friendly, short exchange felt bizarre yet mature. Anne cried that night after Thea went to bed, but it was for the best. She saw that now; much better to cut things off before they got any more serious. Now Anne was free to go back to the “good-timers” as she called them—the string of short-term yet somewhat sexually fulfilling occurrences. There was no shame, she thought, in calling up the lawyer with better-than-average foreplay skills (of course, she’d have to make it absolutely clear that she was not going to be calling him “Daddy” as he’d requested the last time).

  “Oh, here we go!” Anne turned to Rose and slowed the car, nodding at a sign: SCENIC OVERLOOK—¼ MILE. The snow fell steadily as they pulled into the parking lot, a layer of white dust covered the ground.

  Thea pulled her earbuds out of her ears at the sudden stop of the car. “Where are we?”

  “Just stopping to stretch our legs and look at the view.” Anne unbuckled and swiveled around. “You can take some pictures on your phone.”

  “I’ll stay in the car.”

  “Thea,” she snapped. “What are you— Did you re-download Instagram?” She took a breath, reeled herself back in. “Thea, please get off your phone. We’re here to enjoy ourselves, ok? Let’s just get out and take a look around. We’re not far,” she added.

  Thea sighed and unbuckled, pocketed her phone, and slid out of the back of the car. She walked toward some big boulders and picnic benches at the edge of the parking lot. Anne watched her go, all skinny limbs, like a stick figure come to life. Beyond the boulders the earth dropped off, giving way to vast sky and hulking White Mountains in the distance.

  “It looks like a huge painting by that painter. Oh, what’s his name? Do you know who I’m talking about?” Rose held a pret
end paintbrush with one hand to the sky. “You know, with the easel and the smock and the hair? The guy Dad used to watch to relax at night.”

  “Bob Ross!” Anne shrieked as the name popped into her head.

  “Yes!” Rose pumped her fist in the air and her face lit up in a smile showing a small gap between her two front teeth. “Bob Ross! Oh. Oh.” The change in her mother’s face and tone was so dramatic that Anne immediately snapped her head around. Thea stood on a boulder, her back to them, straining forward to capture the view with her phone’s camera. One sneaker slipped forward, and then she was hopping on one shoe, swaying backward and then forward again. Even though Anne had already started running, she was too far away.

  “Thea!” she screamed as her daughter lost the little equilibrium she had and gravity and momentum sent her over the front of the boulder into the abyss. Before Anne reached the rock, Thea’s head popped up.

  “Oh my god.” Thea laughed. “I can’t believe I—” She stopped talking when she saw her mother’s face. “Mom?”

  “Don’t ever do that again,” Anne panted, hugging her daughter tightly.

  “Do what? I was just trying to take a picture.” Thea squirmed out of her mother’s arms as Anne wiped her eyes. “Mom, there’s a ledge. See?” She pointed to the ground jutting out, visible only from right beyond the boulders.

  “Yes. I see that now.” Anne put her head between her knees. “Holy shit, Thea.”

  “Mom!”

  “I’m sorry. Don’t say shit. Jesus Christ.” She poked Thea’s arms and legs. “After everything you’ve been through, I want to make sure you’re ok. That nothing—is—broken.” Anne tugged and squeezed and tapped on each word. “How is your head? Does your head feel ok?”